Glossary Term – Person

Glossary Term – Person

Huey Long (1893–1935), a former governor of Louisiana, served in the US Senate from 1932 to 1935. Long gained followers championing his “Share the Wealth” plan in the 1930s. He argued that Roosevelt’s New Deal did not go far enough and advocated the redistribution of personal wealth through the government as well as anti-monopoly law and banking reform. In September 1935, as he was planning a presidential run for the next year, Long was assassinated at the Louisiana State Capitol.

Glossary Term – Person

Frances Perkins (1880–1965) was an industrial reformer and the first female member of a president’s Cabinet. Perkins started her career as a social worker and worked briefly at Jane Addams’s Hull House. In 1912 Perkins became the executive secretary of the Consumers’ League of New York. She went on to serve several labor agencies, including the New York State Industrial Commission, the New York Council of Organization for War Service, and the State Industrial Board. She was named New York State industrial commissioner in 1929 by then...

Glossary Term – Person

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964), a Stanford-educated mining engineer, spearheaded relief and reconstruction efforts following World War I and proved an effective secretary of commerce (1921–1929) under Harding and Coolidge. He easily won the Republican presidential nomination in 1928, and defeated Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith in the election. His administration, however, was marred by the stock market crash of October 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. In 1932, when some 15,000 ex-...

Glossary Term – Place

Glossary Term – Place

Glossary Term – Place

Hoovervilles were crude camps built from salvaged materials. They were usually located at the edges of cities and occupied by homeless families and drifters during the Great Depression. Named for President Herbert Hoover, Hoovervilles came to symbolize the Depression and the government’s failure to provide relief.

Interactive

Americans everywhere felt the terrible effects of the Great Depression, but in the cities, millions of people living in close quarters were thrown out of work and into even deeper poverty than they had known before the economy's collapse. These photographs, which appear in this issue of History Now courtesy of the Lower East Side Tenement...